FORESTRY. 
EDITED BY DR. B. E, FERNOW. 
It takes 30 years to grow a tree and 30 minutes to cut it down and destroy it. 
WHAT IS FORESTRY? 
In a former issue of REcREATION I defined 
a forest as a piece of woodland placed under 
man’s care for the purpose of producing 
wood crops and incidentally serving the fur- 
ther purposes of soil protection, regulating 
of waterflow, and pleasure. The care of 
such woodlands is forestry. 
Forestry has to deal with aggregates of 
trees, stands, acres, all devoted to one end, 
namely, the production of a wood crop. It 
"does not, therefore, deal with the individual 
trees, except as they are components of a 
crop, any more than the farmer deals with 
the single potato plant. It is a misnomer to 
speak of “city foresters,’ unless a _ city 
really own a forest and have a manager 
employed; a commendable thing to have. 
To apply to the guardians of the park 
and street trees, the tree wardens, the 
appellation of “forester” is, to say the least, 
unfortunate. Indeed, it has been mischiev- 
ous; it has misled the public, befogged its 
intellect as to the real meaning of forestry 
and foresters. It has, like the misused arbor 
days, introduced the esthetic and the senti- 
mental side into the discussions of forestry, 
and has clouded the economic, much more 
important, questions of forestry in the minds 
of newspaper writers and the public. 
The beauty and shade of trees are good 
things to take care of, and the tree warden 
is a laudable institution, but his work has 
nothing to do with forestry, which is after 
the substance of the tree, and, like the lum- 
berman, after logs. . 
Even those who realize that forestry has 
to do with the forest as a crop, have still 
in mind that their duty as citizens is to 
insist on forest preservation, and they be- 
lieve this is obtained by preventing the bad 
lumberman from cutting altogether, or, at 
least, cutting below certain sizes. 
Some years ago a group of gentlemen in 
New York proposed to secure the passage 
of legislation restricting the lumbermen in 
the State of New York from cutting below 
a certain diameter, and they called on me, 
‘d an expert, to tell them what, under proper 
forestry principles, would be the right 
diameter to lay down as a law. Great was 
_ their astonishment when I declared that 
any diameter which paid best, even down to 
the size of the little finger, would satis- 
fy the demands of forestry. There is only 
one obligation which distinguishes the for- 
ester from the lumberman, and that one 
makes all the difference in method between 
the 2, namely, the obligation or reproduc- 
151 
tion; replacing the harvested crop. Both 
forester and lumberman are in the business 
of supplying the industries with wood ma- 
terial, only the lumberman does it by har- 
vesting the accumulations of the past with- 
out reference to the future. The logger is 
merely a converter into useful shape of 
what nature unattended has grown. He 
works for the present only. 
The forester prepares himself to do the 
same thing, namely, to convert nature’s 
accumulations for man’s use; but he con- 
ceives that the need for this material will 
continue, and he provides for that continu- 
ance by securing a new crop of serviceable 
timber to replace the harvested one. Finan- 
cially the 2 forest managers—lumberman 
and forester—are also to a certain extent in 
the same boat. Both carry on their business 
for profit, and not for zxsthetic purposes; 
but the lumberman is handling only “call 
money.” He seeks only present profit. The 
forester treats his forest as an investment; 
he calculates his profits from and for the 
long run. Continuity is the keynote of aa 
est management by the forester. 
There is absolutely no difference Rawies 
rorester and farmer except as to the kind of 
crop each raises on his soil, and the manner 
in which he treats his crop. The forester, 
like the farmer, raises a crop, the wood crop; 
but, of course, he also harvests the crop. 
Hence, when a legislative committee found 
fault with the Cornell Forest demonstration, 
because the old, over-mature crop of nature 
was harvested to be replaced by a better 
crop, the committee simply exhibited its ig- 
norance as to what forestry implies. The 
forester preserves the forest not by abstain- 
ing from cutting it, but, as all life is pre- 
served, by reproducing it. 
There are various methods of doing this, 
and only an expert can decide which, under 
given conditions, is the best. These meth- 
ods of producing a wood crop and of tend- 
ing it after it is produced until harvest time, 
are called silviculture. from the Latin words 
silva, forest, and cultura, cultivation. 
Why should we apply cultivation to a 
crop which evidently can be grown by na- 
ture alone in satisfactory quality? For the 
same reason that the farmer applies cultiva- 
tion to his crop, namely, to secure a better 
result than nature alone can produce; bigger 
potatoes, more of them to the acre: larger 
apples of better taste, and just so, more and 
better wood per acre in a shorter time! 
If Nature were left alone she would re- 
produce all the forests we have cut, provid- 
